


Lillies (of the valley)

by everythingisgay



Series: Lavender, Lilac, Lillies [2]
Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Love Confessions, Multi, Mutual Pining, Polyamory, Self Confidence Issues, Yerim is like...highkey bad at working through her feelings but shes trying, Yerim is trying her best, hyerimwon are so soft, idk if this tropey its just so soft, lots of kissing but not in a sexy way only soft, there is one comment on wanting to die but there are no actions taht would trigger you i dont think, this is pg pals, very little angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24263521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingisgay/pseuds/everythingisgay
Summary: When she’s with Hyejoo and Chaewon she begins to realise why they love the colour purple. She begins to realise why colours can mean so much. Because when she’s with the two girls, she starts to see all the shades of a lily flower, but she sees the white one the most, when her eyes are closed, lips pressed shut, a hum at the back of her throat as Chaewon’s hand rub’s her cheek, or when Hyejoo’s hand is in her own. She sees the same white like the lily of the valley, and while for many the idea of a lily saying, almost like its taunting you, ‘I dare you to love me’, Yerim has never felt like its’ a dare to love someone when it’s become the easiest part of living.Because, in over a year of learning, of steps and steps, forwards and backwards, she learns that being with the people you love should be easy. It shouldn’t feel heavy, or burdensome, like a weight on your shoulders, something you have to carry. She learns this through experience. Because in over a year, she lies wide awake, mostly with Chaewon, or Hyejoo by her side.
Relationships: Choi Yerim | Choerry/Park Chaewon | Go Won, Choi Yerim | Choerry/Park Chaewon | Go Won/Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye, Choi Yerim | Choerry/Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye, Park Chaewon | Go Won/Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye
Series: Lavender, Lilac, Lillies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751440
Comments: 9
Kudos: 85





	Lillies (of the valley)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [She Knows Who She Is (Pls get an account)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=She+Knows+Who+She+Is+%28Pls+get+an+account%29).



> part 2 of my hyerimwon series, enjoy!  
> Elysium - Ancient Roman Mythology: Their version of the underworld  
> Tartarus - the deep abyss, a place of torment, dark, a big Yikesy in ancient roman mythology,  
> also YES i do refer to pluto as hades in this, because more people know hades as god of the underworld, not pluto. sorry to the minute few who care, like me. sacrifices must be made,

It’s not that Yerim doesn’t know. She knows, deep down, at the very bottom of it all, the feeling of love is the most concrete and certain emotion she has ever felt - alongside fear, and doubt, to name a few others. But those aren’t good emotions, so she tries to ignore them. But the irony of it all is that those emotions are the exact reason her love is buried so deep down, under layers of exhaustion, anxiety, worry, and crippling self-doubt that if Jiwoo knew, the elder wouldn’t let go of her for as long as she lived - and maybe longer. Yerim keeps a lot bottled up, okay?

Yerim knows, deep down, she’s in love. And if she looked far enough into it, past the obvious touches, coddling and cuddling, kisses and perhaps suggestive actions that Hyejoo and Chaewon share, they also look at Yerim the same way a flower to the sun. Ironic, isn’t it?

But Yerim’s mind is busy, she doesn’t think the same as other’s do. She laughs because it’s funny. She smiles because she wants to be happy. She thinks all the time because life is full of questions. But most of the time life boils down to one question, and to Yerim, it’s a pretty harrowing one: live, or die? 

Yerim would like to choose the first option. 

In some dramatic, roundabout way, she accidentally hits the ‘die’ option without fully realising it at first. And after she does, she wonders how in all her time living, she hadn’t realised that she had wanted to die all along. 

She would never say that aloud, and that’s the root of the problem.

Yerim speaks because she has to. She doesn’t do so otherwise. She’s silent for all the wrong reasons. She doesn’t want to speak, despite adoring attention. She refuses attention in unconventional ways. She doesn’t like people seeing her - it’s kinda trope-y, isn’t it? The fear of being known? But doesn’t that mean she’s also afraid of herself? She barely knows what everything is, she can’t map it out like it’s the universe. Her heart, her mind, her soul, it’s not as easy to draw and label as it is a map for a cartographer. And the thing is, Yerim has tried. With all her pretty pens, pinks, purples, soft hues of the muted rainbow, trifling over the impact of solitude, the colours harmonious, synonymous with freedom in ways Yerim hadn’t realised until she had entered this new world of self-discovery. 

When you realise, slowly, who you are, and who you want to be, you look at yourself and wonder how you fell so far into the Tartarus pit, you couldn’t help but wonder if you had reached the first level of Elysium. She knew she was not blessed enough for the heroes end, but she always wondered if her mind was Hades own form of punishment. Live with yourself, unfiltered, full of unadulterated anger, self-loathing and confusion. Live with it all, he almost teased, and then, somehow, like flowers had bloomed, he whispered, all that time later, _and then learn to love it all anyways._

Problem is, Yerim found out the hard way, that in order to ‘love it all anyway’ as the bastard God tantalised her with, you actually have to try. Yerim doesn’t have the time, the energy, or the care do it at all. She wishes she did, truly. But she was just….not good at it. She had no reason to be, because really, she was fine. At the end of the day, she was _fine._ She had her bad days, but didn’t everyone? 

See, Yerim may not observe herself as much as she should (if she did, she doesn’t think she’d be as much of a mess) but that doesn’t mean she can’t observe everyone else. Some better than others, of course. But her most enjoyable, but painful observation is the one between two of her closest friends. 

Hyejoo and Chaewon are in love. Yerim has known that for just as long as she has known she loves them, too. It’s not hard to see, and it’s hard to ignore. But the thing about it all is that when Hades told her to ‘love it all anyway’ she heeded that advice for only one matter, in the beginning. And that was with them. She didn’t try and act ashamed of it, because she quite honestly had bigger things to worry about. Yes, she hid. But that was who she was. It’s what she did. 

She starts small, with the whole loving yourself anyway thing. She starts with loving more freely, more honestly. She starts by not hiding her expressions, her emotions as much. And then she stops there. Because that’s so fucking hard, it takes months to master. 

Step two comes much later. And Yerim hates that it's Hyejoo and Chaewon that kickstart it all. 

They’re giggling together, the three of them, as they stumble around the events entrance, the other members scattered behind and in front of them. Yerim’s hair is newly dyed, the purple oozing with untamed vibrance, and they’re laughing and grasping each other’s hands, leaning against each other subtly as they flock towards the waiting room. She’s speaking, miles a minute about God knows what because she can hardly catch what she’s thinking it whizzes by so fast. But she hears them laugh, Chaewons notes and Hyejoos crackling laughter blend, and everything is happening and Yerim isn’t quite sure what she see’s, or how she knows she’s seeing something intimate until she feels it in her very body. Because their eyes are on her, solely, and even though the girls’ hands are holding each other, they aren’t just there together, just the two of them - Yerim is in that bubble. Chaewon’s left hand is outstretched, ready to grasp onto Yerim’s arm, her eyes grappling at the edges with joy, painstakingly in love and Yerim can barely breathe with how her heart is constricting. It’s like the record has scratched, and the frame has frozen, and her mind is just broken at the mere vision of Hyejoo and Chaewon, mouths wide and laughter spilling out so jovially that Yerim thinks that maybe its time to go onto step two, not just for her own sake - but for these girls, too. Because she knows this feeling, deep down, and she knows its love. 

She knows its love because both the girl’s favourite colours are shades of purple and although Yerim’s decidedly isn’t, she doesn’t really have an ultimate favourite. She knows it’s something that can be both dark, but inviting, light, but unkind. Soft, but strong. Perhaps red could do the trick. But that’s not the colour, because red is too bold. And Yerim is too timid, too afraid. But she thinks her heart has started to beat differently, and maybe she isn’t so far into the pit as she first thought. With more work, she could make it out. 

She sees the steps fall into place when she falls asleep by Hyejoo or Chaewons side. She feels the change when she lets herself be held a little longer by Jinsol, and when she lets Jungeun baby her, and for Sooyoung to coddle her and listen to her scolding. She feels it when she puts up her boundaries, doesn’t sacrifice herself to be kind. She finds that she can be kind, but careful. She can tell people to stop, stop being so….everything, stop yelling, and touching her like they know she wants it when the truth is she barely even likes the feeling of herself in her own skin as is. 

She learns that the best step is respecting yourself. That by respecting yourself a bit more, you realise your self-wroth. She learns that maybe that daring whisper in her ear, of Hades reminding her that love is in everything, is actually true. 

In their year-long hiatus, Yerim learns a lot. She learns that when she writes love letters to herself, she writes them in a notebook with a black background, a white gel pen, smudging in areas as she rushes out kind words. She’s trying to remind herself to let love be at the apex of her life, not at the bottom, under layers of secrets like it had been all that time ago. 

In over a year of learning, of steps and steps, forwards and backwards, she learns that being with the people you love should be easy. It shouldn’t feel heavy, or burdensome, like a weight on your shoulders, something you have to carry. She learns this through experience. Because in over a year, she lies wide awake, mostly with Chaewon, or Hyejoo by her side. She doesn’t feel a heavy weight pressing against her chest, not the same way she does when she’s on stage. 

When she’s with Hyejoo and Chaewon she begins to realise why they love the colour purple. She begins to realise why colours can mean so much. Because when she’s with the two girls, she starts to see all the shades of a lily flower, but she sees the white one the most, when her eyes are closed, lips pressed shut, a hum at the back of her throat as Chaewon’s hand rub’s her cheek, or when Hyejoo’s hand is in her own. She sees the same white like the lily of the valley, and while for many the idea of a lily saying, almost like its taunting you, ‘I dare you to love me’, Yerim has never felt like its’ a dare to love someone when it’s become the easiest part of living. 

She’s not sure when she reaches the nth step, maybe its post one year hiatus - probably, she thinks, because she loses count when she’s trying to remain sane as Hyejoo presses against her in the kitchen, wrapping arms around her waist, cradling her and then kissing her ever so gently it’s almost like Yerim is a delicate flower that could crumble with too much pressure.

Yerim had never felt delicate before. 

Yerim kind of hates it. How behind a door, she is Hyejoo and Chaewon’s in ways no one else can see. It’s not that she wants them to own her, it’s that she wants to count as something. She wants to kiss them, hard but carefully, she wants to hold them close, whispers in their ears and tells them she loves them both. But the words die at her lips, and she’s getting really fucking tired of all this death. She wants to start again, but purposely choosing the ‘live’ option, instead of death. 

And Yerim does get angry of course. But this isn’t anger, this is wanting. Because, yes, she is deeply attracted to the two women. She wouldn’t spend over half her free time lazing around with them, dancing and singing, playing games, laying by their sides late into nights, kissing them lazily and languidly, seeing only their eyes in the dark and falling deeper in love with them to not be attracted to them. She’s not ashamed to admit that. 

She thinks, after all those steps she has taken, the fact that she has somehow made it out of the pit, that she is allowed to have her confidence. And she does, because if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have done what she had done. 

It’s a little reckless, but she decided to live a little. So she locks the damn door behind her after Chaewon and Hyejoo have entered. It’s a quite snap, metal clanging, and the two girls don’t hear it over their chatter. She just wants some _time_. So she creates it, not wanting to wait. 

It was admittedly hard to navigate it all at first, but Yerim’s rhythm is good, and she’s a fast learner, despite a little frazzled. They’re lying on the ground, a bed not big enough for three grown girls to fit on together. They don’t mind. Hyejoo has the switch set up, the three using their joy-cons to play a round of mario kart. Yerim is winning, and Hyejoo is mumbling under her breath about _fucking stupid princess peach_ and Chaewon is having fun with the ghost. It’s quiet, then, after Yerim has won again. They’ve been laughing so much, sides in stitches with joy as they lean in close to each other on their stomachs, eyes trained on the little screen. 

And there the feeling is back again, the blinding white of lilies upon lilies, majestic and lovely, and the moment has returned, as it usually does when she’s with Hyejoo and Chaewon. She’s smiling the same smile she did over a year ago when Hyejo and Chaewon had really looked at her for the first time, and Yerim is starting to realise that life is a series of moments, and she so desperately hopes she remembers this one forever. That she never feels like she has to forget it. 

Chaewon is looking at her as speaks, and it’s usually not that big of a deal, but she’s so fucking close. Their faces are centimetres away, and it’s not uncomfortable, or weird. It’s just....overhwelming, because Yerim wants to kiss her so badly. And she never really initiates it herself, afraid she has crossed an invisible line that in hindsight, she had made herself. But she thinks, to hell with restraint, because she’s kissing Chaewon before it really hits her. She just feels that sensation, the rush of joy sparkling through her, a river of calmness, a surging wave of joy. She feels it in Chaewons touch, how they move in a swift but careful motion, parting ways as they sit up properly, and then it’s like a magnetic force, opposite ends meeting because Yerim can’t stop feeling, and it would probably come off as weird, how Yerim is technically kissing her best friends girlfriend, but what would be even weirder is the fact that once their lips part, Yerim is going to kiss Hyejoo exactly how she likes it. 

So she does. 

She kisses Hyejoo at that angle where their lips brush so gently, where a graze of skin is felt beneath their lips, and Yerim keeps kissing her, leaning forward, her presence washing over Hyejoo in a new, but familiar way. Hyejoo’s hands are at the back of her neck, some strands of hair stuck between her fingers and Yerim is probably loving this a bit too much because Hyejoo has this little whine she makes when she gets overwhelmed because the sensations of touch start to make her breath catch in ways that feel like heaven on earth, and she makes it then, and Yerim gets it, gets the colour white in ways she never had before. 

Hyejoo and Chaewon don’t ask questions, even when they should. But Yerim explains anyways, quietly, her hands tugging the girls impossibly closer. She can feel the blazing heat emanating off their skin because at first, she finds the words dying on her lips. So she looks at them each, at both sides of her and she feels the thorns and nettles dissipate. In the little crevices of her heart, she feels something seep in, yet again, and she’s so familiar with it she would be worried if it felt foreign.

“My favourite colour is white,” Yerim alludes, stating it clearly, her voice thick, laced with something akin to love, but masked under a small secret not yet revealed. 

“I still prefer purple,” Hyejoo teases gently, taking a strand of Yerim’s hair and twirling it around her finger. 

Yerim blushes bright red because in all their time together, she’s still not immune to the girls’ charms, no matter how long they’re being used on her. She hears Chaewon’s giggle and rolls her eyes at the elder. “Shut up,” she mumbles but doesn’t let go of Chaewon’s hand for even a moment. 

“Why is white your favourite colour?” Hyejoo wonders softly, tracing patterns against the palm of Yerims hand. 

“It’s like this,” Yerim begins, “It’s that feeling, you know? Of pure bliss? Like when your hands are on Chaewons waist, and you’re wrapped around her finger. You’re holding her, and she had her hands on your neck, and she does that thing,...where her nails sort of dig into your neck, leaving little crescent-shaped indentations that you wouldn’t see unless someone pointed them out. But you can feel them because Chaewon’s touch is like nothing else, it’s different, and it’s beautiful.”

Chaewon had never heard it before, she’s only seen the look on either girl’s face. She has never heard, let alone felt it herself. Not the way Yerim is describing it like it’s the most simple and beautiful thing in the world. But Yerim leads her hand, the one not occupied by Chaewon’s, to the exact spot she has mentioned, but this time on Chaewon’s neck, Hyejoo’s hand still in her own. Both girls hands hover for a second, and then Yerim’s hand is there, gripping the back of her neck softly, nails scratching the surface and Chaewon can feel it. She refuses to let her eyes close, letting them settle on the curiosity of Hyejoo’s, and the glimmering light in Yerim’s. The second youngest kisses her quickly and it sort of hit’s Chaewon that she doesn’t for a second see a problem with any of this, that the two girls she loves are above her and shes trusting them so blindly it should be concerning. 

Hyejoo lets go of Yerim’s hand, and for a second Yerim wonder’s if the girl is lost, if the gentle breaths against her cheek weren’t calm breaths, that the way the younger had pressed her free hand against her back gently, was a sign to stop that she had misinterpreted. But it’s not the case. Because Hyejoo let’s go of her hand to press a finger to her chin, makes her look her dead in the eye before she kisses her, her hand moving to cup her jaw, and Yerim isn’t sure what the sound she lets out is, perhaps partially made out of surprise, but also because it feels so fucking good. 

Yerim hates when the two part ways, but Hyejoo always does this thing, where her lips are still ghosting her own, and she begins to speak, like an extra level of emphasis is put down because Yerim can feel them move against her own. 

“White, like the completely blissed out look on your face that takes you a few extra seconds to land back on earth after Chae or I, kiss you,” Hyejoo begins, then kisses her, a small peck, there and gone in the blink of the eye, “white like the way you can’t let go of Chaewon’s hand, how only one is on my neck right now?” 

Yerim gulps back her thoughts, only nods, keenly aware that her words have been stolen from her, and that maybe she isn’t as good at hiding as she thought she was. 

Hyejoo moves fully away from her, and Yerim is all too distracted by the feeling bursting against her heart, mourning the loss of Hyejoo’s body against her’s in ways she never really understood the importance of until she had felt it firsthand. 

“Is the colour white because of innocence? Because when Hyejoo and I hold you or kiss you, you know it’s because we love you, and don’t expect anything other than you to love us in return?” Chaewon whispers it into her ear, the hairs on her body standing tall at the sensation of her closeness, how her words are teasing but truthful, but most importantly, that she had said it for the first time. They hadn’t ever said it like this before, but when Yerim cranes her neck to look at Chaewon, she doesn’t see a hint of a lie and part of Yerim is yet again, tempted to just shut up forever so she can just get lost in this feeling. But she doesn’t. 

She leans her head back and Chaewon catches her with her chest, the back of her head resting against the scooped, elegant dent on Chaewon’s left side, and looks up at her for just a moment before her eyes flicker over to Hyejoo’s, who’s looking at them with the same look she gives Chaewon when Yerim herself is watching from afar. 

“White, because I love you. Because I see you both in everything, and white is the beginning of nearly every colour, in everything.”

It hangs in the air for a few moments. Not because it’s big news, surprising, or shocking. Not anything like that. It’s because Yerim never says she loves them, not with that tone of voice, the one reserved for honesty early into the morning, just before dawn breaks and the birds sing. 

Chaewon scoots backwards until her back hits the wall, keeping a steady hold on Yerim, hands around her waist, no chance of letting go. Hyejoo follows their movements silently, crawling forward until the wall is hit, and then she’s taking her place in between Yerim’s legs, head mirroring Yerims and resting against the middle girl’s chest. She lets out a little hum, completely silent like the two others before she moves, nestling in closer to Yerim, hand’s holding onto Yerim and Chaewon’s tightly. 

At the end of it all, Yerim is glad that she took all those steps because she would hate for this to happen when she didn’t feel as alive as she does now, in this very moment. 

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading, pls leave kudos and mayhaps a comment because it would mean the world!


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